


dream of me

by icarusinflight



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Jennifer Blake, Minor Injuries, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Past Jennifer Blake/Derek Hale, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 12:05:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12320736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusinflight/pseuds/icarusinflight
Summary: It’s not a flashback, more like a hint of a memory.Derek presses his head against the shower wall and tries to block the memory of the dream from his head.“It’s not real.” He says out loud, trying to convince himself of the truth behind the words. “She’s gone. She’s dead, she can’t come back.”Derek has a nightmare.





	dream of me

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this because I had pretty much this exact nightmare - and this exact scene in the shower, and the need to secure my house.
> 
> It was written as catharsis for me, but I have been informed that it can be a bit of a rough read(it didn't surprise me, I was in a not great place as I was writing it, but writing it made me feel better).  
> Make sure you read the tags - please go into this aware of what is going down, and if you're not sure if that's your thing, by all means please give this one a miss.
> 
> Special shout out to [Triggeringthehealing](http://triggeringthehealing.tumblr.com/)/[Froggydaren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/froggydarren/works) for beta'ing and check out their fic [blue skies fade to grey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12317112) for a wonderful Sterek pillow fort to help out if you need some fluff afterwards.
> 
> With that said _it gets better_ for Derek at the end, I'm not leaving him in that state.

In all the movies, people always wake up from nightmares by jolting upright, gasping for air.

Derek has never done that. Normally when he wakes up from a nightmare he can’t move. The smell of his own terror fills his nostrils, and he can’t move. Sometimes his heart races, sometimes he can’t breathe, sometimes his breathing is out of control, gasping for air until he’s worried he’ll pass out from it.

When he can finally move he often lies there still, just moving his arms and legs, small twitches to remind himself that he _can_ move now, that he’s no longer incapacitated by the trap that is his mind. But while the ability to move his body returns sometimes he still can’t. Can’t find it in himself to get up, not even to get a drink of water, or use the bathroom. The terror which had frozen him previously still present, even if it’s no longer overpowering his body.

If Stiles is over sometimes he’ll roll over and wrap himself around him. Stiles doesn’t always wake, and sometimes it’s enough to just feel Stiles’ body against his, to replace the smell of his own terror with Stiles’ scent.

On the occasions when Derek does wake up Stiles with his movements, Stiles is never angry. Stiles is notoriously slow when he wakes up, quick to wake but lagging behind on processing normally. But even if he may not be firing on all cylinders, he still relaxes into Derek’s hold, and runs his arms along Derek’s body, offering platitudes and reassurances that he’s here now, that none of the dreams can get him. Sometimes Stiles will come with Derek when he needs to get out of bed, and sometimes they abandon the bed altogether, wandering downstairs to snuggle on the couch and watch mindless cartoons until they drift off again.

This time though, it’s different.

He wakes slowly, and he doesn’t remember his dreams. It’s not unusual for Derek, sometimes he will, sometimes he won’t.  

He’s lying on his stomach, so he stretches out his legs and arms, straightening and feeling the muscles straining, waking back up after a night’s rest. His back cracks, and he lets out a content sigh at the feeling.

His morning feels normal, and it’s nice to be waking up slowly, without anything he needs to rush off and do.

He makes himself tea, drinks it slowly while sitting down and looking out the window.

It’s not until he’s in the shower, running the water over his hair that his dream comes back to him.

It’s not a flashback, more like a hint of a memory.

He remembers it had been just like this, waking up slowly, getting ready for his day, he’d been in the shower when everything had seemingly gone sideways.

He’d been distracted in the shower, felt comfortable, when suddenly Jennifer had been there, calling his name and watching him as he showered. She’d claimed that she needed Derek’s help, that he needed to help her with something, although if she’d said what in the dream Derek couldn’t remember. He’d been unable to hide in the dream, and although she hadn’t leered at him, he’d still felt vulnerable, exposed. The shower had a partial glass frame, which was fine normally, but offered nowhere for Derek to hide from someone watching him. Normally it was Stiles watching and talking to him when he showered, and that was something they both enjoyed.

This wasn’t like that.

Derek had finished up quickly, wrapping a towel around himself and walking off to get dressed and ready for his day, but Jennifer had followed still, talking to him, never leaving him alone, and Derek knew that in his dream he had agreed to whatever her request was, either to get her off his back, or because Derek had always struggled to say no to her.

The thought sends a chill through his body.

Derek presses his head against the shower wall and tries to block the memory of the dream from his head.

“It’s not real.” He says out loud, trying to convince himself of the truth behind the words. “She’s gone. She’s dead, she can’t come back.”

The words echo in his head, but they don’t make him feel any better. His chest feels like it’s tensing up, and his breaths are coming faster than usual. He wants to get out of this place; it doesn’t feel safe with the memory of Jennifer lingering in his mind. He wants to curl up and hide and barricade himself in the house where no one can get to him.

The thought has barely crossed his mind before he’s turning off the water, grabbing the towel and minimally drying himself off before he’s out of the bathroom.

He knows he’s still dripping water as he walks, he barely ran the towel over his hair for one, but he needs to act now.

He throws on sweats and an old tee before he’s off to secure his house.

The back door has a sliding door bolt he rarely bothers with, but he engages it now, giving a little tug on it to make sure that it won’t give without a reasonable amount of force.

The side and front doors have deadlocks he wouldn’t usually lock, but he grabs his keys to lock them both now, engaging the door chain on the front door as well.

The sliding glass door is a problem Derek thinks. Someone could get something between the lock and slide it open. He stands staring at it for a moment before he remembers a friend in New York who had parts of broom handles in the runners for all the windows in her house, therefore making it impossible to slide open from the outside.

He walks off to grab his broom from the kitchen, he measures it up to the window, and then, using a single extended claw he slowly cuts through the wooden handle, careful not to snap it in the process, which would likely make it the wrong size, and therefore useless.

When he’s done he stands back to observe his handiwork.

He’s happy with that, but someone could still break the glass to get in.

He’d hear it, but he also wants to put as much between himself and any possible intruder. He looks around the room, when his eyes fall on his couch in the living room, he decides that will make as good an obstruction as any, and drag it over to barricade against the glass.

He should barricade the other doors too though, so he places chairs in front of them, jammed right up close to the handles. He places a glass salad bowl from Erica on the chair at the back door, a dutch oven on the chair at the side, and the ceramic mixing bowl on the front door. All of them are placed right at the edges, and it anyone were to try to open the doors, the dishes should fall and smash, giving Derek an alert of the intrusion.

With that done he walks around the house locking the locks on the windows as well. The locks are good, not easily thwarted like the sliding door lock, but he makes a note to get more broom handles next time he goes out so he can create jams for the windows too.

He comes back to the living room when he’s done, surveying his work.

The living room does look a bit of a mess, the couch pulled away from its location, and jammed against the side window, the table missing a number of its chairs.

The remaining half of the broom handle including the broom head is discarded near the window. The broom is useless now; he’ll have to get a new one, or just vacuum when he’d usually sweep. It’s a worthwhile sacrifice though.

He feels a little worn out from it all though. And the tightness in his chest is still present.

He considers going back to his bedroom. He could shut the door and barricade that too, but if someone were to get that far, the bedroom doesn’t leave him an exit strategy, so he chooses instead to grab one of the remaining chairs from the table, pulling it to the breakfast bar where he can see both the front door and the sliding glass doors.

Then he waits.

 

* * *

 

 

Derek wakes to the sound of something smashing.

He’s leaping up before he even knows what he’s planning to do. Whether he should head towards the noise and fight the intruder, or just run and flee.

He’s not even sure which direction the noise came from, whether it was from a door or the windows, he doesn’t know which direction he should be running to, or from, and he stalls, frozen again in inaction.

Thankfully a noise, a voice calling; “Derek,” is the next thing he hears.

Even more thankfully, the voice belongs to Stiles.

He goes to call out, to respond to the softly called words, but when he opens his mouth the words get stuck in his throat. He can’t bring himself to move yet either, the adrenaline in his body still making everything go tight, and it might not be an intruder but he still doesn’t feel safe.

“Derek, are you home? Did you put the door chain on? And barricade the door?”

He is and he did do both of those things. But he still can’t bring himself to respond. Stiles isn’t breaking in, he has a key, he comes round all the time. Hell, they’ve been doing this _relationship thing_ for almost a year now. Stiles comes over all the time. This is his space too.

“Babe I need you to respond otherwise I’m gonna force myself in here okay?”

It’s the worried tone that finally snaps Derek into action. The previous words had sounded concerned, but now Stiles sounds outright worried.

It’s enough to make him move, walking towards the front door. The ceramic bowl has smashed on the floor, as Derek had meant it to. He avoids the larger parts with his bare feet, but he still feels some smaller shards digging into his soles of his feet. It’s not important though, they’ll heal.

When Derek moves so that he’s visible from the small gap between the door and the wall he can see Stiles pushed hard up against the door, and when Derek comes into his range of sight he lets out a sigh.

“Jesus dude. You really had me scared there. Why is the door locked? Can you let me in? My plan was to use the rubber band trick from Elementary, but I’ll be honest I’ve never used it before, and it would be a whole lot easier if you just let me in.”

Derek nods, and Stiles steps away from the door, releasing the pressure on the chain.

When Derek closes the door, he takes the moment to push the chair to the side, moving it from where it had been pushed by the door, leaving the door free. He uses his foot to push aside some the pieces of the ceramic bowl, which earns him a few more shards in his foot, but he ignores them as well. When the space is mostly clear, he unhooks the chain.

He places his hand on the door knob, takes a deep breath, and slowly opens the door for Stiles, makes sure as he does to check that there isn’t anyone else outside, just waiting for this time. When the door is open he steps aside for Stiles to enter, and Stiles rushes inside, heading straight to the living room.

Derek doesn’t watch him, but he does hear the gasp from Stiles when he sees the room, and he hears Stiles stop dead in the living room.

Derek takes his time to reset the chain, and place the chair back behind the door. He should reset a bowl, he thinks. Especially with Stiles here, there’s a chance he might miss the noise of the door being opened. Besides, it was only the smash of the bowl which had alerted him this time.

He feels Stiles’ eyes following him as he walks to the kitchen, locates a smaller glass mixing bowl, and walks back out to place it back on the chair behind the front door.

Then he walks out into the living room, coming to stand before Stiles.

“Expecting someone?” Stiles asks, waving his hand around the room at the mess he’s created, and it’s an innocent question, the tone teasing, but it’s too much, too close to how Derek’s feeling.

His breath catches in his lungs, and he can’t respond, can’t even do so much as nod or shake his head, he’s not even sure which one it is, whether the answer is yes or no.

Something must show on Derek’s face, because Stiles is dropping his bag on the floor and moving towards Derek before he has even worked out a response.

Stiles reaches out his arm slowly, fingers doing the little one at a time tap Stiles does to ask for permission when Derek is upset. It’s the time he has before he can move away, if he flinches, or provides any resistance he knows Stiles will stop immediately, but Derek doesn’t want that.

It feels like an age, waiting for the last tap of a finger before Stiles changes his taps to a grip, squeezing his arm tightly. Derek doesn’t think before acting, stepping in closer into Stiles’ space. Stiles’ arms come up around him and Derek feels like he’s melting into them.

His chest still feels tight, and his breathing is still painful and strained, but at least he has Stiles here.

Stiles has one hand resting against his lower back, and the other is gently rubbing up and down in the space between his shoulder blades. It feels nice.

Derek buries his face into Stiles’ collarbone, inhaling as deeply as he can with the pain still in his chest, and tries to focus just on the smell of Stiles, on the feeling of his arms around Derek, the hand moving up and down on his back.

“Hey.” Stiles says, and the hand keeps up its soothing pattern on his back. “Did something happen?”

“I had a dream.” Derek admits, vaguely.

“A dream?” Derek doesn’t respond, and Stiles asks instead. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” Derek responds immediately. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to admit that it was something as simple as Jennifer getting into his house and _asking him for a favour_ that has caused this response. Part of him knows this was above and beyond a normal or reasonable response, but he still feels like he had to, still feels like he needs the extra levels of protection he’s surrounded himself with. He’s sure Stiles would understand, but the thought of sharing it still scares him. The big bad wolf afraid of being asked for a favour.

Which of course is what makes him realize he wants to tell Stiles something, even if he’s not ready to tell him _everything_.

The feeling of Stiles inhaling, the tell-tale sign of his words to come spur him into action.

“Someone broke in. In my dream.” Derek inhales again, deeper this time thanks to the way his lungs have decided to function again. He swallows before adding: “Jennifer.”

Their bodies are pressed together, but Derek would have heard the sharp intake of breath from Stiles from across the room, feels the way his hand stills for a second, before pressing Derek in tighter to him.

“That bitch.” Stiles splits, and it’s a sentiment Derek agrees with wholeheartedly, but dream him had still agreed to do what she asked. “She’s dead Derek. She won’t be coming here again.”

“I know.” And he does, but it doesn’t help the feeling.

“So you had a dream.” Stiles voice catches at the word and he hesitates before continuing. “and you safehoused the place up?”

“Yeah.” Derek waits for the laugh, for the condescension. This is it; this is when Stiles tells him he’s an idiot.

“Okay.” Stiles says, easily. “Would it help if I kept watch too? Or you could rest while I keep an eye out? We could go lie down in the bedroom.”

“No.” Derek says quickly. “No exits in the bedroom.”

“Yeah that makes sense.” Stiles agrees easily. “What if I were to drag the mattress out here? Then we could lie down. Or you could lie down and I’ll keep watch?”

Derek considers the plan. He’d fallen asleep before anyway, but he doesn’t feel rested. He still feels like his body is on high alert, while simultaneously exhausted like he’s just fought off a pack all on his own.

He also feels safer here in Stiles’ arms than he’s felt all morning.

“Okay.”

“Cool.” Stiles pulls away from Derek, sliding his hands to hold at Derek’s arms. “You wanna help me move the mattress in here?”

Derek’s eyes are shooting to the glass door before he can respond. It’s locked, barricaded and obstructed, but if someone were to break in how long would it take for them to hear, to notice, to get out? He’s running the scenario in his head before he can think about leaving the room.

Stiles’ squeezes his bicep, and it drags him away from his thought process. “I’ve got this. You stay here.”

Derek nods, aware that he probably shouldn’t have been so worried at the thought of leaving the doors unguarded, but relieved nonetheless.

He listens to Stiles’ movements in the house, making sure that all the noises he can hear are Stiles and only Stiles, and only when the mattress is in the living room does Derek help with moving it, picking up one side and easily manoeuvring it into the middle of the room, shoving aside the coffee table with a foot to make sure it’s in the best position possible.

Stiles takes off to the kitchen, grabbing a water bottle from the fridge and passing it to Derek, who opens it and takes a sip, placing it beside the bed when he’s done.

They slide in, Derek curling so his head rests on Stiles’ lap, and Stiles with an arm resting on Derek’s shoulder.

It feels like he’s just got comfortable when he shoots back up.

Stiles looks at him expectantly.

“The deadlock. I forgot to lock the deadlock on the front door.” He explains, moving to push the covers off.

Stiles stops his movement. “I’ve got this. Just stay right here.”

After he’s turned the lock, and Derek hears the bolt slide into place, he hesitates when he returns his own set of keys back to his bag. “Would it be okay if I did some work on my laptop while I keep watch?”

It’s a sign, he thinks, that he’s starting to relax, either due to the distance from his dream, the barricading, Stiles’ presence, or a combination of all three, that when he nods his assent, he means it.

Still, he’s not entirely there yet. “No headphones or playing noise though.”

“Of course.” Stiles agrees easily, and they return to their positions on the bed, only this time Stiles crosses his legs and places the laptop in front of him. Derek still places his head on Stiles lap, his face on Stiles’ thigh facing the laptop, but he closes his eyes and blocks it out.

He focuses on the press of Stiles’ thigh, his smell, and the familiar and reassuring sound of Stiles tapping away at his laptop keyboard. He feels himself starting to drift this time, and Derek lets himself go without fighting it. He knows he’s safe now.

 

* * *

 

This time when he wakes up it’s slower. He can feel fingers running through his hair. He blinks his eyes awake, and waits for the world to come into focus. He’s still looking at the laptop, but it’s been closed now.

“Hey sleeping beauty.”

“Hey.” Derek twists his body to look up at Stiles. He has his phone in the hand not currently buried in Derek’s hair, the fingers stilled from when he moved, but he’s not looking at that now, instead smiling down at Derek, Derek tries to return his own sleepy smile “How long was I out?”

“A little over an hour.  You feel better now?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He responds, closing his eyes again as Stiles resumes the movement of his fingers.

“How would you feel about ordering some pizza, making a pillow fort, and watching some cartoons? We can sleep out here on the mattress tonight if you’d like.”

“If you order the pizza I’ll pay for it.” Derek agrees, “But how about Brooklyn 99 instead of cartoons?”

“Sold.” Stiles says, and his fingers still again Derek’s hair and when he looks up Stiles is focused on the phone, probably ordering the pizza. Derek sits up stretching out his body, feeling the cracks from his joints as he does so.

He waits until Stiles is done with his phone, before wrapping his arms around Stiles and pulling him down into the mattress, burying his head into Stiles’ collarbone again, breathing in his scent again.

“Thanks.”

Stiles squeezes him tight. “Literally any time dude. Any time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Writing this fic meant a lot to me, and I know it was a rough ride, but thank you for getting through (maybe treat yo self or give yourself a hug now).
> 
> Comments and kudos give me life  
> If you wanna hit me up on tumblr to discuss this, or for any reason, you can find me at [candybarrnerd](http://candybarrnerd.tumblr.com/)


End file.
